French Elections: Populist Revolution or Status Quo?

"If the Macron bubble doesn't pop, this may portend the realignment, not just of French politics, but Western politics in general, away from the left-right division that has defined Western politics since the French Revolution, towards a division between the people and the elites." — Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, French political analyst.

"This divide is no longer between the left and the right, but between patriots and globalists." — Marine Le Pen, French presidential candidate.

The presidential election in France officially got underway on March 18, when the Constitutional Council announced that a total of eleven candidates will be facing off for the country's top political job.

The election is being closely followed in France and elsewhere as an indicator of popular discontent with traditional parties and the European Union, as well as with multiculturalism and continued mass migration from the Muslim world.

The first round of voting will be held on April 23. If no single candidate wins an absolute majority, the top two winners in the first round will compete in a run-off on May 7.

If the election were held today, independent "progressive" candidate Emmanuel Macron, who has never held elected office, would become the next president of France, according to several opinion polls.

A BVA market research poll for Orange released on March 18 showed that Marine Le Pen, the leader of the anti-establishment National Front party, would win the first round with 26% of the votes, followed by Macron with 25%. Conservative François Fillon is third (19.5%), followed by radical Socialist Benoît Hamon (12.5%) and Leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon (12%).

For the first time, the two established parties, the Socialist Party and the center-right Republicans, would be eliminated in the first round.

In the second round, Macron, a 39-year-old pro-EU, pro-Islam globalist (platform here), would defeat Le Pen, a 48-year-old anti-EU, anti-Islam French nationalist (platform here), by a wide margin (62% to 38%), according to the poll.

Macron, a former investment banker, was an adviser to incumbent Socialist President François Hollande, one of the most unpopular presidents in modern French history. A long-time member of the Socialist Party, Macron served in Hollande's cabinet for two years as economy minister until August 2016, when he resigned to launch his rival presidential bid to "transform France."

Macron, whose core base of support consists of young, urban progressives, has tried to position himself in the political center, between the Socialists and the conservatives. His meteoric rise has been propelled by a scandal involving Fillon — who is the subject of a criminal investigation over allegations that he used government money to pay his wife and children more than €1 million ($1.1 million) for jobs they never did — and because the Socialists fielded Hamon, a nonviable candidate who has promised to pay every French citizen over 18, regardless of whether or not they are employed, a government-guaranteed monthly income of €750 ($800). The annual cost to taxpayers would be €400 billion ($430 billion). By comparison, France's 2017 defense budget is €32.7 billion ($40 billion).

Macron's ascendancy comes amid heightened worries over security. More than 230 people have been killed in attacks in France by Islamic radicals during the past two years. The latest attack, on March 18, involved a 39-year-old French-Tunisian jihadist who proclaimed that he wanted to "die for Allah," and was shot dead after he tried to seize a soldier's weapon at Orly Airport in Paris.

Shortly after the attack, Le Pen accused Macron and the rest of France's political establishment of "cowardice in the face of Islamic fundamentalism."

In an apparent effort to bolster his national security credentials, Macron on March 18 announced a surprise proposal to restore compulsory military service. He said he would require men and women between the ages of 18 and 21 to serve one month in the armed forces.

"I want each young French person to be able to experience military life, however brief," Macron said. "This is a major project of society, a real republican project, which should allow our democracy to be more united and the resilience of our society to be increased." Macron, if elected, would become the first president in modern French history not to have performed military service.

Observers say that Macron's national service proposal — which copies Le Pen's proposal to reintroduce compulsory military service for a period of at least three months — is an attempt to siphon votes away from Le Pen and Fillon, both of whose campaign platforms call for a strong national defense.

Macron's proposal, which will require an estimated €15 billion ($16 billion) upfront, and another €3 billion ($3.2 billion) each year to maintain, has been met with derision because of its exorbitant cost and dubious contribution to national security. Le Mondereminded its readers that France spends a similar amount (€3 billion annually) on nuclear deterrence.

Fillon's spokesman, Luc Chantel, said the proposal was "absurd and unrealistic" and added:

"Either it is a measure designed to discourage students from quitting school, and this is not the mission of the army, or it is training for the defense of France, and one month is a joke, it is a discovery camp."

Some of Macron's other policy positions include:

European Federalism: Macron has repeatedly called for a stronger European Union. At a January 14 political rally in Lille, he said: "We are Europe, we are Brussels, we wanted it and we need it. We need Europe because Europe makes us bigger, because Europe makes us stronger."

Single European Currency: In a January 10 speech at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Macron, speaking impeccable English, said: "The truth is that we must collectively recognize that the euro is incomplete and cannot last without major reforms. It has not provided Europe with full international sovereignty against the dollar on its rules. It has not provided Europe with a natural convergence between the different member states. The euro is a weak Deutsche mark, the status quo is synonymous, in 10 years' time, with the dismantling of the euro."

Migration Crisis: Macron has repeatedly praised German Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door migration policy, which has allowed more than two million mostly Muslim migrants into Germany since January 2015.

In a January 1, 2017 interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung, Macron accused critics of Merkel's open-door migration policy of "disgraceful oversimplification." He said: "Merkel and German society as a whole exemplified our common European values. They saved our collective dignity by accepting, accommodating and educating distressed refugees."

In a February 4 rally in Lyon, Macron mocked U.S. President Donald Trump's pledge to build a wall with Mexico: "I do not want to build a wall. I can assure you there is no wall in my program. Can you remember the Maginot Line?" he said, referring to a failed row of fortifications that France built in the 1930s to deter an invasion by Germany.

Islamic Terrorism: Macron has said he believes the solution to jihadist terrorism is more European federalism: "Terrorism wants to destroy Europe. We must quickly create a sovereign Europe that is capable of protecting us against external dangers in order to better ensure internal security. We also need to overcome national unwillingness and create a common European intelligence system that will allow the effective hunting of criminals and terrorists."

Islam: Macron has said he believes that French security policy has unfairly targeted Muslims and that "secularism should not be brandished to as a weapon to fight Islam." At an October 2016 rally in Montpellier, he rejected President Hollande's assertion that "France has a problem with Islam." Instead, Macron said: "No religion is a problem in France today. If the state should be neutral, which is at the heart of secularism, we have a duty to let everybody practice their religion with dignity." He also insisted that the Islamic State is not Islamic: "What poses a problem is not Islam, but certain behaviors that are said to be religious and then imposed on persons who practice that religion."

National Defense: Macron supports NATO, and has pledged to increase French defense spending to reach 2% of GDP by 2025 — a level to which all NATO members agreed in 2006. At the same time, Macron believes in the need to create an "autonomous" European defense capability, also known as a European Army, which would duplicate military capabilities which already exist within NATO.

An Ifop poll for the Journal du Dimanche published on March 18 found that French voters are divided into "two quasi-equal blocks" about Macron's honesty and his ability to govern. According to the survey, only 46% of French people believe he will be "able to guarantee the safety of the French people." More than half (52%) of respondents said they were "worried" about Macron, while 52% said they doubted his honesty.

In an interview with BMFTV, Laurence Haïm, a Canal+ reporter who was accredited to the White House and who recently joined Macron's team, described Macron as the "French Obama." She added: "I think that in today's world we need renewal, from someone young, who is not a politician. He wants to make the democratic revolution."

So what is driving Macron's political ascendancy? French analyst Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry explains:

"The best way to look at Macron is as a kind of anti-Le Pen, or, to stretch the bounds of logic even further, a 'populist from the top.' If Le Pen is anti-establishment, Macron is the incarnation of the French establishment, a graduate of ENA, the top civil service school that trains the country's elites, and a member of the Inspection des Finances, the most elite civil service track. His only experience in the private sector is through the revolving door as an investment banker. And yet, Macron sounds off populist rhetoric: His candidacy, he says, is about sweeping out a corrupt system (even as he is supported by the vast majority of the French establishment).

"It would be only slightly churlish to say that the parts of the system Macron wants to do away with are the democratic ones; witness his full-throated support for the EU in a country that has rejected it at the polls. Macron supports various liberalizing reforms, and Angela Merkel's welcoming policy towards migrants. He is, of course, a social liberal. In a country that takes culture very seriously, he has argued that there is 'no such thing' as French culture; rather, there are many cultures with which the French perform a kind of synthesis. His biggest donors seem to be French tax exiles residing in London and Brussels.

"In other words, he is the mirror image of the political realignment that is transforming Western politics. If the familiar motley crew of populists — Trump, Le Pen — are the candidates for those who lost out from globalization, then Macron is the candidate of the winners. In both cases, they seem to make old left-right divisions obsolete. If the Macron bubble doesn't pop, this may portend the realignment, not just of French politics, but Western politics in general, away from the left-right division that has defined Western politics since the French Revolution, towards a division between the people and the elites.

"The old left-right debates have outlived their usefulness. Primaries have shown that debates about secularism or immigration, as well as globalization or generalized deregulation, constitute a fundamental and transversal divide. This divide is no longer between the left and the right, but between patriots and globalists.

"The collapse of traditional parties and the systematic disappearance of almost all of their leaders shows that a great political re-composition has begun."

At that same rally, Le Pen launched a two-pronged attack on globalization and radical Islam. She also promised French voters a referendum on remaining in the European Union in order "to allow us to recover our four sovereignties: monetary, economic, legislative and territorial."

She went on to articulate exactly what is at stake for France in this election:

In all respects, this presidential election is unlike previous ones. Its outcome will determine the future of France as a free nation and our existence as a people.

After decades of errors and cowardice, we are at a crossroads. I say it with gravity: the choice we will have to make in this election is a choice of civilization.

The question is simple and cruel: will our children live in a free, independent, democratic country? Will they still be able to refer to our system of values? Will they have the same way of life as we did and our parents before us?

Will our children, and the children of our children, still have a job, a decent wage, the possibility of building up a patrimony, becoming an owner, starting a family in a safe environment, being properly cared for, to grow old with dignity?

Will our children have the same rights as us?

Will they live according to our cultural references, our values ​​of civilization, our style of living, and will they even speak our French language, which is disintegrating under the blows of political leaders who squander this national treasure — for example, by choosing a slogan in English to promote the candidacy of Paris to host the 2024 Olympic Games?

Will they have the right to claim French culture when certain candidates for the presidential election, puffed up by their own empty-headedness, explain that it does not exist?

I ask this important question because, unlike our adversaries, I am interested not only in the material heritage of the French, but I also want to defend our immaterial capital. This immaterial capital is priceless because this heritage is irreplaceable. In fact, I am defending the load-bearing walls of our society.

The choice for French voters is clear: Le Pen is the anti-establishment change candidate and Macron is the pro-establishment status quo candidate.

Le Pen is offering voters an historic opportunity to reassess relations with the European Union, reassert national sovereignty and stanch the flow of mass migration from the Muslim world. By contrast, Macron is offering voters increased European federalism, the transference of yet more national sovereignty to the European Union, and the further multiculturalization of French society.

If polls are any indication, French voters appear to be more comfortable with the status quo. The populist revolution that began in June 2016 when British voters decided to leave the European Union, and cross the Atlantic in November when Americans elected U.S. President Donald J. Trump, will not be spreading to France in 2017.

Comment on this item

19 Reader Comments

Jackie • Apr 16, 2017 at 21:27

The trouble with Islam/Muslims is they abide by the Sharia law code. Sharia is in direct opposition to America's Constitution and our culture as a Judeo-Christian society. This goes for Europe too. Don't they realize Muslims do not know what the word assimilate means because they will never assimilate into any culture. They only want Sharia law wherever they live. BANNING SHARIA in Christian-Judeo countries is the only way out of this evil, barbaric ideology.

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Gebhard Von Blucher • Mar 21, 2017 at 15:17

The British and the Americans and the States Of Europe that have not bought in to the Islamic future of Europe can not just shrug their proverbial shoulders at what could very likely be the Islamisation of France in the next decade or two.

Such an outcome will be a serious existential problem for these states. A France with a powerful Islamic population, even if a large minority, will necessitate a very different approach to international policies, as well as domestic policies. This will greatly affect Britain, America and Eastern Europe in terms of security policy, migration and the response to Jihad. A France with a strong Islamic identity, or partial identity, will as a matter of ideology, be hostile to those nations who do not share this view point.

With Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium and Sweden rapidly being eaten alive by Islam, the prospects for peace between these states and the rest of Europe and America will be slim. America might well have a very pro-Islam Canada to contend with unless the Socialists in the guise of the Liberals are not defeated.

Can this state of affairs be challenged or stopped? The choices are extremely limited. Can America and her allies pressure France to change course and also the rest of Western Europe? Only if the EU is destroyed. The EU with its co-conspirators the OIC and the UN must be where pressure is exerted to change policy on Islamic immigration and Islamophilia in general. If the situation worsens over the next 10-20 years or so a new European war could realistically be a possible outcome; America would be drawn in for her own protection.

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Lynn Atkinson • Mar 21, 2017 at 13:03

My husband identified this new schism and wrote about it in his 1987 book, The Emancipated Society' available on Amazon.It's really hard being thirty years ahead of the curve. The collateral damage suffered by Europeans would have been avoided if only we could make ourselves heard.

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Peter Paramus • Mar 21, 2017 at 12:10

21 March 2017

No amount of whitewashing can hide the very serious problem plaguing France and the majority of Western European nations: the steady invasion of anti-Western, misogynist, intolerant, backward, medieval-minded Muslims.

No amount of left-wing wishful thinking can change the damage being caused by migrants who, in their vast majority, are neither remotely interested in assimilating nor in respecting French traditional cultural values. The globalist bien-pensants insist their way is the only right way. Facts prove otherwise as any well-informed person can attest.

The reader of this comment might read Eric Zemmour's illuminating and well-researched book Le Suicide Français (2014) in which he carefully details the damage done to France by socialist/left-wing governments and left-wing intellectual élites who have demonized and belittled the average French citizen and his and her values over the past forty years.

This moment in history is a replay of the ostrich attitude shown by most European leaders in the thirties when they ignored the danger presented by Hitler. The only lone voice raised in warning was Churchill's and we know he was proven right. Now the élites in Europe are blinded by the same smug illusions with regard to the menace of Islam.

If we refuse to pay the price, making instead a fortress of our illusions, neither we nor our children will have any refuge.

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Patriot • Mar 21, 2017 at 11:57

If Soeren Kern and the Opinion Polls are correct then, it's all over with France. However, the Polls were wrong in UK and wrong in USA. I hope there is a silent majority in France who understand what Marine Le Pen is saying.

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Juanita Skelton • Mar 21, 2017 at 10:34

I tend to agree with this very detailed political assessment....but....anything can, and usually does, happen.
History tells the story of a complacent France during times of great social and political upheaval, i.e. pre-WWII. They seem to develop a need to wait until such a time when a very heroic voice strikes the right truth....then, they go to battle, so to speak. Then, they are able to "see" the enemy with twenty-twenty vision. Let me also say, there is not a more deliberate hero on the face of the earth than the French fighting for their prized freedoms and wonderful rich culture!I would warn any who would underestimate the French. You know you have stepped on a scorpion when you can no longer STEP! I would hope that even if the French people "fall asleep at the wheel", again, of their sovereign glorious nation, that they, the French know that we have their "back" and the rest of Europe, as well.It is not easy to defend your sovereignty or even SEE the need to be sovereign when the stronger global "voices" are shouting you down, or painting a giclee of UNITY over SOVEREIGNTY!

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Michael Waugh • Mar 21, 2017 at 09:46

French politics are difficult to understand. Left-right politics and feathering one's own nest seems paramount. Marine Le Pen could be the saviour of France. Above all she is a patriot and wants to put the brakes on undesirable immigrants from the East and the South. Have not the French suffered enough? She wants out of the EU and the Euro, or at least the population to have a referendum. France was a popular place for we English to visit and live. Not any more I fear.

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Barry • Mar 21, 2017 at 09:34

Being interested in France, America's oldest ally and a worldwide symbol of liberty and culture, I appreciate this analysis. While Macron's views seem a confusing melange, clearly he will not resist the dangerous Islamification that threatens that culture. But that said, Fillon seems corrupt and hostile to French labor, the left is hopeless, and I'm still troubled by the old neo-Nazi element of Le Pen's National Front. What does the French Jewish community think?

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Tony Porcaro • Mar 21, 2017 at 09:17

This very well written article clearly defines what is at stake for the French people as well as for western democracy as a whole; as a Canadian I cannot fail to notice some striking similarities between Macron and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau; aside from the attractiveness of good looks and youth they also share some very erroneous and frightening world views; and even a cursory examination of these positions reveal what can only be called an appalling ignorance based on the deliberate use of delusional thinking; that "thinking", of course, is designed to promote their elitist agendas in the midst of and in spite of the reality that their "policies" simply do not work,a fact no better exemplified than the failed leadership of Angela Merkel; sadly, it is Merkel who both politicians idolize and support blindly without any thought of critical analysis or recognition of the facts and that reality which they continue to deny; and, in essence, as LePen would say, what they really deny is the right of their own people to exist as their own cultural and national identity; in this sense alone they are potentially more dangerous than any Marxist or Fascist regime we have known in the past!

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Ernie T • Mar 21, 2017 at 08:34

Macron is a classic opportunist, seeking personal glory. His oratorical style is reminiscent of house-painters (his eyes blaze) and he speaks with more emotion that intelligence. The very fact he was Hollande's financial advisor for two years ought to be the equivalent of a squadron of Stukas screaming violently earthwards to warn people. And he's a bit odd too.

Fillon has lost swathes of conservative support following his unbelievable behaviour after the exposure of how he enriched his beloved family from the public purse, for doing absolutely nothing. A well-heeled château dweller, he is not short of a bob or several hundred. Before the shocking revelation, he was well thought of by many across the spectrum. No more - "Tempora mutantur" - The times, they be a-changing.

Hamon, a classic clueless socialist, resorts to bribing the voter. Even the dumbest voter knows the French kitty is seriously empty. Good luck there Benoît.

It would not surprise should Melanchon, an ex-communist, drop pretence and the "ex" part at the same time. Another rabble-rouser, for which, revolution-seekers always lurk, he has his followers, but not enough, so we all hope. He'll probably do relatively well, he's plenty of life in him.OTOH, he is strongly anti-EU/EC etc, which shows no-one is wholly bad.

This leaves Le Pen, for whom many hold huge hopes, but it would require a wholesale change of mentality of millions of French people to elect her. One huge drawback is she has not a single member in the national Parliament, a massive disadvantage, but it's unwise to ignore her. She says in public what so many say, over and over again, in private.

The "loyalties" of elections past are gone, for ever, probably, voters today are better informed and, probably, they share the same feelings of disappointment, despair even. Now huge changes are required. Anyone venturing a forecast should bear in mind that 50% of voters have not yet made up their minds and, anyway, 1/3 already claim they won't vote. It might even be like that come election day V2.0.

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Lon W. • Mar 21, 2017 at 08:27

France as we know it is gone. Time will tell what it will become. Hopefully Britain will be able to save its identity by pulling out of the EU. I would like to see U.S. commitments re-evaluated and our military commitments to Muslim states in Europe re-assessed as well.

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Domus Canus Lon W. • Mar 22, 2017 at 05:26

France is indeed gone, at least the France we knew and loved. In the past I went there about 3 times a year to buy supplies for restoration work and the shop I patronised was in the St Denis area of Paris. As this is a heavily populated Muslim area that was becoming more threatening as time went by I decided enough was enough. Walking through the place was akin to being in North Africa, no women on the streets and the grim and hostile stares from these men was enough to call a halt to my buying anything there. A shame really as the shop owner was a decent man and I did tell him I wouldn't be back and the reasons why. He said I wasn't the only one and it would only be a matter of time before he would have to close his doors.

But this is merely one incident in the death of a country. The numbers of tourists bypassing France is staggering, same here in Italy, and when people opt to sojourn in Russia and the leaders of Europe pretend all is well, then we know we are is very serious trouble. Nice on the coast of the Med is suffering, as are all the major places that rely on tourism because of the scourge of the depraved ideology of Islam, while the gangsters at the EU scheme to bring in more and more of the adherents of this throwback 7th century madness. America will not save us this time nor should we expect them to, considering we did nothing to help ourselves by defying our governments and removing these people from our midst.

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Dr. Richard Carlyon • Mar 21, 2017 at 08:25

Soeren Kern is to be congratulated for a perceptive and balanced view of the new reality which faces us all in the West. We need to progress Kern's political topography in detail, for and by each of the cultures and nations of the West.

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jeb • Mar 21, 2017 at 08:10

A government that just doles out money to its citizens for doing nothing, owns them. That is the status quo and is an indicator not of business as usual but regressive liberal socialism that is pro-Islamic.

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Andrew • Mar 21, 2017 at 07:36

Macron has been parachuted in by the banking cartel to continue the globalist and EU agenda consisting of unlimited immigration, which will eventually tip the electoral balance of power away from the already shrinking indigenous demographic, who understood a long time ago that their existence was being threatened. I am still unsure what the endgame is? We are being told that automation and robotics will replace many menial employment activities in the next 10-15 years, so flooding the continent with unskilled labour that will add to a shrinking human workforce, that due to advances in health will also be living longer, does not bode well for the dwindling number of resources that are available to us.

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Jeff Page • Mar 21, 2017 at 07:17

If the French people have any common sense at all they will shun Macron and vote in their droves for someone who has their country at heart, Marine Le Pen!

The liberal elitists are tearing the whole world apart with their crazy support of Islam. Never in all history has seemingly intelligent people walked blindly down the road to nowhere. Have they not caught on yet that everywhere there are Muslims there is death and destruction and this is all in the name of "Allah" or more correctly, in the name of the paedophile "prophet" Mohammed.

It is becoming more obvious that the politicians just don't care about how these Mohameddans are acting in Europe, all they seem to be interested in is boosting the populations. They care little for the people who have been raped and viciously attacked by these Muslims, they just want more votes in order for them to remain in power. Little do they realise that they will be the first on the chopping block so to speak when their collusion is no longer needed!

I just could not believe it when the Dutch fell into Rutte's trap and voted him in, instead of Geert Wilders. It's almost as if they, like other European citizens have been hypnotised by all the lies about Islam being a religion of peace. Crazy decision that will come back to bite them hard!In the run up to the French election, and even with all the trouble from Muslims, it seems the elite are still determined that their softly, softly, approach to Muslims will win in the end. Little do they know or should that be , don't want to know, what the Muslims real intentions are in Europe.

Madness reigns across some European countries, whilst in others, they have taken a hard line approach to Muslims.

The European elite must always keep in mind that Muslims cannot be trusted, they say what you want to hear because it suits the situation at present. When they gain more power, the truth and real intent will emerge!

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robert davis • Mar 21, 2017 at 06:51

To me there is no difference between the Hollande disaster and Macron : Hollande for multiculturalism too + socialism. In fact so far it was umps and now we have umps+macron. SAME DIFFERENCE... I prefer a little thief such as Fillon if he can fight off Islam, of which I'm not so sure than umps-macron who would pave the way for for a Moslem France! A coalition Marine/Fillon would be the best or at least the lesser evil.

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Albert Reingewirtz • Mar 21, 2017 at 06:40

France is just about done with. Soon it will be just a memory. French citizens soon will be all called Francaoui. Sounds so melodious while in fact it will be odious. So predictable!

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